"I AM, I AM, I AM"
So, if everything can be an illusion, can we know anything for certain at all? My conclusion is YES! Self-aware beings know that they exists. Self-awareness is the sensation of knowing that You Are, sometimes accompanied by a sensation that You have always existed, and will always exist. Students within the Mystery School traditions may exclaim "I AM, I AM, I AM" to acknowledge that they have been Enlightened to this fact. The first "I AM" is the realization that You Are, the second that You Have Always Existed, and the third that You Will Always Exist.
So, what the heck is "Self-Awareness"
I broke these theories to a friend of mine once, and he could not grasp it since he (according to himself) has no sensation of self-awareness. I thought long and hard to find a simple way of explaining what self-awareness is to someone that is not, the challenge was dazzling since it is sort of like explaining what colours are to someone that has been blind since birth.
I finally think that I found a simple way of explaining what self-awareness is to people that don't acknowledge that they are self-aware themselves.
The Dream Proof
Most people dream when they sleep, some more vividly than others. Sometimes when one sleep one realizes that the dream is not "real", which often causes the person to wake up. This sensation of you feeling less real in a dream and the dream not being the true reality is exactly what self-awareness is; a profound emotion that You Exist and that You are real. An emotion that may be hard to explain with conventional logic. When you feel less real in a dream your conscious mind may say "Hey! This is not reality!" and You Awaken from The Dream.
I hope I have helped You on Your travels.
Update @ 18:54 :
I realized that some of those who read this article this will not understand that I'm suggesting that the Spirit is the source of ones self-awareness or consciousness. I'm in other words not suggesting that the human body is eternal. See my definition of the Spirit in my blog post "Philosophy - Defintion of the Spirit" for my thoughts on this matter.
I was a bit worried about that friend of yours who did not claim to have any “self awareness”. It sounded more like a psychological diagnosis than a philosophical statement. However when you say “I broke these theories to a friend of mine once…” what theories are you talking about? Is it the thought that reality is just an illusion? And what has self-awareness to do with that? Maybe you mean to say what Descartes once said; that the only thing we can be absolutely sure about is the fact that we exist. It might be tempting to add: “…and no dream or illusions can take away from us our knowledge of our own existence.” But that is probable wrong. Deep down in the filthy underground of society there is rumored to be a drug known as vitamin K. If you are stupid enough to try this drug there is a chance that you will loose the sensation of selfhood. The drug simply mess with connections in you brain that are vital for creating the feeling of self awareness. People taking the drug say they feel connected with everything else, they feel connected with the world and not with their own individual self. Actually they even don’t know what individual self mean anymore.
SvarSlettThis is of course a very special case so I wonder why you feel the need to explain self-awareness to other people. Maybe it says something about the kind of friends you have (they have all escaped from psychiatric institutions …).
I hope you would write some more about your theory and its relation to self-awareness because it seems interesting. What you have said so far is just hinting at some vague idea that is in serious need of elucidation.
The friend in question is convinced that humans are no more self-aware than a computer is. I postulated to him the following: If in the future one could map the entire human body and simulate it in a computer program, the software would simulate all the electrical and biological that we knew the human body did. My question to him was; do you claim that you are not more self-aware than the software is? He said "Yes, that is exactly what I mean". I can't prove to him that he has self-awereness any more than I can prove to anyone else that I feel self-awere. Many people does not adhere to theories that the human experience is any more that flesh, and blood, I postulate here that there are more dimensions to reality.
SvarSlettI postulate that if reality is a "dream" that not everything is "fake" since I claim that the subjective emotion of self-awereness transends reality and is our connection to the true reality or hyperreality if you want.
Decarts did say that, other statements like "I think therefore I am" from him seem to show we think alike.
As you see I postulate that self-awereness transends the flesh and blood, call i the spirit our soul if you want to.
No, all my friends are not escapes psychiatric patients, but I am not ashame to say that some of the wisest people I have met have been in psychiatric institutions.
Thank you for you interest in my ideas. So far blog posts are more scetches of my ideas and not the complete ideology.
Sorry for any bad spelling, I'm writing this on my iPad while having lunch at a coffee house with lots of distractions :)
In my opinion everyone in their right mind has self-awareness and any claim otherwise shift the burden of proof over to the doubter.
SvarSlettYou say that: “If in the future one could map the entire human body and simulate it in a computer program, the software would simulate all the electrical and biological that we knew the human body did. My question to him was; do you claim that you are not more self-aware than the software is? He said "Yes, that is exactly what I mean””
Hmm…when you say “If in the future one could map the entire human body and simulate it in a computer program…” you have already stated that the software is not really self-aware, but it is only simulating being self-aware. If you could develop a set of questions that would determine with high probability whether someone was self-aware or not, the software would pass the test. But that does not mean that the software is really self-aware. It just means that it is able to perfectly simulate being self-aware with words and actions. So if your friend claims that that there is in principle no difference between himself and this software, then it means that he/she could not know whether he/she is just a simulator or a genuine biological entity called human. But that seems like an unsound statement. The word “simulate” means just that; it is not really self-aware. So you friend must then think that he/she is not really self-aware, but he/she only acts like it for everyone else to see. I don’t think anyone in their right mind would claim that sincerely. At least the burden of proof is not on your side anymore.
However there could be a computer, or an artificial constructed machine of some sort, that really is self-aware and not just simulating it. Maybe this is what you friend had in mind. This machine would then be without any spirit or soul I guess, so your friend would then claim to be self-aware without any spirit or soul. He/she would be a kind of strictly material biological machine sufficiently advanced to generate self-awareness. That is a sound statement even if you disagree about it being true.
The main question then becomes: Is it possible in principle to construct an artificial machine that is self-aware? Or do you also need a soul or spirit that is somehow beyond the material world to succeed?
There are probably whole libraries devoted to those questions so I will not pursue it any further. But I would guess you are among the naysayers to that first question.
My mental experiment with the "self-aware software" was for those that postulate that self-awareness is contained within the body. The body is in fact just a collection of atoms, which, by the laws of physics, we can model pretty well in smaller software programs today. So, imagine that someone in the future took a very detailed X-RAY of your body, so detailed in fact that we could see every atom in your body. Then we took all these atoms and modelled them in software, like we do with smaller models today. My question is twofold; will the software be self-aware, and will it be you (since the X-RAY snapshot was of your body)? If one claim self-awareness is of the flesh, I think one has to say "Yes" to this question, as there should be no difference between the body and the software as it all comes down to plain maths in physics anyway.
SvarSlettSome may still argue that there is a difference between maths and the real atoms, but none has been able to prove this too me. But to amuse them I have made this little mental conundrum: Today we already have atom printers; printers that can actually print objects atom by atom, it takes forever to make stuff, but in the future it is plausible, to me at least, that one can print more complex things rather quickly. Imagine that we took that very detailed X-RAY of your body in the future, so detailed that we can see every little atom in your body. We figured out that your made of are x% iron, y% hydrogen, etc, and we filled the atom printed with all the needed iron filings, hydrogen gas, gold powder, etc that it needed to do its job. Just like we fill ink of different colors on our printers today. Then we stared to print you (or copy of you to be precise), one atom at a time, Hydrogen, Gold, Iron, Oxygen, etc., atom by atom. My question are, will the printed copy of you become self-aware, and will it be you?
If the answers to any of these toughs experiments are "No", then I postulate that self-awareness is something *outside* the physical body, in the hyper reality, call it soul or spirit if you will.
You have just exposed “Star Trek” as the bloodiest TV-show ever; with several main characters getting killed each episode…
SvarSlettI'm guessing that you mean the Star Trek Teleporter works the same way as my atom printer :) That may be murder.
SvarSlett